The Language I Wish Go Was

[bearophile]

Juanjo Alvarez:

> I wish Go, sorry, D had named arguments too. Its a simple feature 
> that nuke a trunkload of function overloading.

I use named arguments every day in Python, they make the code more readable and safer at the calling point, because there's less risk of passing wrong data.

And recently I have seen that named arguments are widely used in SPARL Ada too, to make code less bug-prone. If a feature is seen as good in both Python and SPARK (that are two very different language), then it's good.

This is the syntax in Ada (and SPARK):
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Subprograms#Named_parameters
And in recent C#:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd264739.aspx

On the other hand, currently there are many D2 features that are unfinished and buggy, so adding even more stuff is not a good idea. And I think named arguments are a purely additive change. So Walter may add them later when the current features are implemented well enough. Currently it's much more important to focus on eventually needed non-additive changes instead.

Bye,
bearophile